Fuelling a fusion

Mike Conway writes:

When Royal Dutch Shell decided to merge eight of its businesses into a single European exploration and production operation 18 months ago, quality leadership was identified as the most important ingredient for the success of the move. The aims of creating Shell Exploration and Production Europe (EPE) included providing the logical synergies of a larger structure and enabling new cross-border business opportunities to be realised more quickly. But it was a complex move, the businesses that came together including Norway’s Norske Shell, NAM in the Netherlands and Expro in the UK were based in eight different countries. We recognised that if we failed to get the top 65 leaders of the new business aligned and operating effectively, we had very little chance of bringing the rest along. I was regional HR director at the time, and it became apparent to me very early on that our leaders could not make the change without help.

The help we offered had to be appropriate to the individual leader, but delivered in a way that was consistent with the direction in which we were heading. To this end, we devised a three-part leadership development programme, which went live in October 2003 and included assessment, formal development and one-on-one coaching. The first component of the programme was a half-day assessment that directly involved each leader’s new boss. Consisting of a shortened version of Shell’s full two-day assessment programme, this not only revealed a great deal about each individual but, perhaps more importantly, established a new relationship between the leadership team members and their new executive boss.

The assessment resulted in a new learning and development contract for each individual, newly agreed and supported by the senior line. The second component was a non-optional six-month training programme called Leader of the Future, delivered by external provider JMW. This programme allowed strong relationships to develop across the team and supported in-depth enquiry and practice around what it took to deliver extraordinary results. The leaders faced new responsibilities and a real personal challenge as they struggled to make the organisation work across Europe. Coaching, which was the third component of the programme, needed to support the leaders through this challenging transition to a new structure and operating model. High on the agenda was the need to introduce different ways of working across country boundaries and to move towards virtual teamworking. It was also crucial to be clear about accountabilities and pay attention to the way in which leaders showed up in the organisation.

With these issues in mind, we worked with six experienced leadership coaches from the Delta Partnership to devise a six-month programme for Shell EPE’s 65 senior leaders. As part of this programme, each leader had six confidential coaching sessions involving face-to-face meetings, plus email and telephone contact. A coaching network, consisting of the coaches and sponsoring HR staff, also met regularly to pinpoint organisational themes and issues. After some debate, we made this coaching non-optional. This turned out to be uncomfortable for a few people and with hindsight we might have done it differently, but it was preferable at the time to having endless debates about individual preferences. The message we were putting across was that we knew we faced a real challenge and that paying attention to leadership was not optional.

People said: “Wow, they really mean it,” and it certainly made them curious about what we felt might be missing in their leadership qualities. All too often, coaching begins with a purpose but takes on a life of its own. There is always some value in working with a skilful coach, but coaching is very expensive and I wanted to maintain focus and purpose. We therefore decided that the programme would have a clear start and finish, and take, in total, about eight months. With so much going on in the organisation, it would have been easy to miss the early signs that changes from the old to the new were taking place. Many participants quickly adopted new approaches to the issues they identified, and changes in their leadership behaviour were soon apparent. These were reinforced by the executive team, which picked up on the areas for attention that were fed to them from the coaching network we had set up.

Delta also provided plenty of insightful feedback about their collective findings, and there were some surprises. For example, the feedback helped to shine a light on the executive team and how we performed and behaved. We discovered that the top 65 put much greater emphasis on our visibility and style than we had realised. While we were focusing on our direct reports, they, quite reasonably, were looking to us to lead the cultural change the organisation was going through. In part, they were seeking help in dealing with and getting value from us. This realisation has sparked a separate project within the EPE leadership team around both individual and team development.

Shell is moving towards a more consistent global approach to people, including the development of leaders. This means far fewer scattered efforts in different parts of the business. What that means for external coaching is still an open question. I am sure it has a place, but we have to resolve what this is and how we achieve consistency across the organisation. There is also the important question of the leader as coach. More and more leaders are curious about that part of their role and the skills they need in this area. Reflecting more broadly on coaching, I would say that companies need to be clearer about what they want from it. The idea that executives simply work with a coach of their choosing and maintain an essentially personal relationship does not necessarily make good business sense, and may either deflect the individual or produce the wrong results.

At Shell EPE, we were concerned that the coaching effort be reasonably aligned and certainly joined up so that we could gather feedback and learn from it. Good coaches will make it their concern to find out where the organisation is going, and specifically what it wants from the coaching contract. I always feel encouraged if a coach wants to see the boss of the person being coached, and I get pretty curious when the relationship becomes distant from the business. Too often, there is no clarity about what coaches are actually doing and exactly how what they are teaching supports the business. Of course, coaching needs to be geared to the unique characteristics of each individual, but it also needs to relate to that individual within the context of the needs of the business as a whole.

Mike Conway was recently appointed vice-president of resourcing and development at Royal Dutch Shell

Lester Desmond writes:

At Shell we have a strong belief that employees at all levels benefit from developing coaching skills. Our chief executive champions coaching and has stated publicly that he coaches his team and expects its members to coach their own teams in turn. Speaking about restoring Shell’s reputation after the recent problems with our oil and gas reserves, he said: “We must start with motivating, coaching and developing people a primary responsibility of all leaders.” Our approach is somewhat unusual, in that we want all our people to coach. So, although we use external coaches from providers such as the Delta Partnership,we expect the bulk of the coaching to be done internally. It’s a question of organisational identity. We are not yet at the point where coaching and mentoring play a formal role in all business areas. We are seeing more and more people ask for coaching, but we want to go further and make sure it is seen as part of the way we work. Most of the work I have done as an internal coaching and mentoring consultant has been within Shell’s exploration and production business, which employs 30,000 or so people. But we are moving towards a more global approach across the group, which employs around 100,000 staff.   Although coaching is inherent in the role of line managers, we recognise that managers are not always the best people to coach their teams, particularly when it comes to technical skills or if individuals need higher levels of coaching expertise.

With this in mind, we have trained a body of internal coaches. They are either development coaches, who tend to be HR professionals trained to deliver leadership coaching, or technical coaches, who are generally experts in particular fields. However, our needs vary across the business, so sometimes we identify employees to act as full-time technical coaches, for example, in business areas where there are lots of graduates needing coaching. In other areas, technical coaching forms part of people’s general job roles. In line with our basic tenet that coaching benefits working relationships at every level,we have been offering a two-day coaching programme to all employees for several years. Developed by an external coaching provider and customised to suit Shell’s organisational culture, this workshop aims to give participants a grasp of the basic principles and skills of coaching. We find that putting whole teams through it can be a useful way of fostering a common view of coaching, which can then be applied to team issues.We have just introduced an online coaching module, reflecting a company-wide move towards more online and blended learning.

This module supports our many existing coaching programmes and helps participants in the continued development of workplace coaching skills. Participants are required to be in a coaching relationship as part of the programme, which enables them to receive feedback on their skills, as well as support from facilitators.  We also offer programmes to develop employees as technical coaches or leaders’ coaches. We appreciate that HR managers at all levels have a key role to play in coaching leaders and managers, so one of our recent programmes was aimed at both junior and senior HR managers.

Three years ago we adopted the “shadow coaching” approach offered by Delta, which involves senior leaders receiving direct coaching feedback from more junior staff. Although this model needs maintenance, we have used it successfully in the new European exploration and production organisation, although it has not yet been embraced as enthusiastically in some countries as it has in the UK. Coaching elements are woven into our other leadership development programmes, in recognition of the role of coaching within our leadership competency framework.

Development programmes for senior executives incorporate action learning assisted by coaches, and those employees who want to develop these skills further have the option of attending external programmes. However, the quality of coaching by line managers is still somewhat patchy. Some managers haven’t attended coaching programmes, while others simply don’t dedicate enough time to the coaching part of their role. This is partly down to Shell’s history as a very technical business, where technical skills have traditionally received more attention than softer skills. In addition, coaching is only one of a number of key skills that managers have to exhibit, and this may result in some individuals failing to prioritise it. We realise that to improve managers’ skills and performance as coaches, coaching needs to be given the necessary priority when it comes to role descriptions, tasks and targets, and therefore performance appraisal and development. This will ensure that coaching becomes a key tool in the drive to achieve business goals. 

Lester Desmond is a coaching and mentoring consultant at Shell International Exploration and Production BV, based in the Netherlands